Social network Facebook has said it will roll out some major changes to its news feed during a March 7 event.

Invitations were sent out Friday summoning media to "see a new look for News Feed" at an event set for this coming Thursday starting at 10 a.m. PT at the Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to announce the changes.

It's unclear yet what features this News Feed update will bring, but as always with Facebook redesigns, expect it to be met with complaints from friends threatening to boycott the service because they liked it the old way and can't figure out how to work it anymore. Also expect that they won't actually leave, they just like to moan.

Something that could really push users over the edge, however, is that the social network is rumored to be experimenting with an overhauled profile design, which perhaps might change too much too fast.

Tested on selected users in New Zealand, the single column redesign will shift status updates and shared content to the right-hand side of profiles, and will add a remodeled 'About' section on the left. Along with this change there will also be a new Like Page button underneath status updates from companies or services where users can choose to be taken to their Facebook webpages.

Facebook's last update was Graph Search with Bing integration, which lets users search using four different categories: People, Places, Photos and Interests. The feature can also be used for dating and recruitment, Facebook said, so we recommended deleting any crude photos before the feature is rolled out to all. µ

There appears to be an update underway, one that will be rolling out over a “multi-week” timeframe according to Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts.

The update was announced by Matt on Twitter in response to a question about why some of the search results look spammy. Matt replied saying, “Yup we saw that. Multi-week rollout going on now, from next week all the way to the week after July 4th.”

It is unclear exactly what this is an update for. Is it in response to an update on the PayDay algorithm or maybe the softer Panda update? We asked Matt Cutts and Google to clarify but Google won’t clarify.

Google has said that Panda is a multiday update, so maybe this update is related to that. If that is true, we’d probably be at the 27th update to Panda. The last Panda update we counted was Panda 25 but Google stopped announcing them; however, we think there has been at least one Panda refresh since the last confirmed update.

Or, this update Matt is referring to may be designed to improve the situation with the PayDay loans algorithm having some oddities. Such as the example Matt responded to with a search for [car insurance] in Google UK and the Matt Cutts payday loan hack from a week ago. There are many examples of places where the payday loan algorithm did not remove spam, so this update might be related to that.

Have you noticed ranking and traffic changes from Google over the past few days? Let us know in the comments.

If you're like many Facebook Page administrators, you check Facebook Insights for your Page on a regular basis.

A lot of insightful data is contained within the Facebook Insights user interface (UI) and even richer data if you make use of the API or a robust social analytics tool.

There are also, however, a variety of metrics in the Facebook Insights UI that can be misleading unless you know what the data represents. These metrics relate to Reach and Talking About This and are found within the corresponding tabs in Insights.

The reason why these metrics can be misleading is because they are unique metrics, which means daily totals can't be summed to get the total for a week, month, or any other time period.

For example, you could have exactly 1,000 people talking about your Page each day in February. That doesn't mean you had 28,000 people talking about your page for the month. Those 28,000 stories in February may have come from just 5,000 unique people.

The same is true for the various Reach metrics. Reach is defined by Facebook as the unique number of people who have seen any content associated with your Page.

The challenge is that it takes a significant amount of computing power to be able to calculate these types of metrics on the fly for any date range that a Facebook Insights user defines.

So how does Facebook deal with these types of metrics? It restricts the time increments that you can view to either daily, 7-day or 28-day periods.

In the Facebook Insights UI, your view is restricted to rolling 7-day periods. This is not evident when looking at a chart such as Reach where, based on the x-axis, it appears to be showing daily values.

Hover over any point in the chart, however, and you will see it is actually showing the total for the previous 7-day period. Exporting the data or using the API will allow you to also get at the daily and 28-day values

While fairly useful when used in conjunction with a frequency distribution, or even looked at in relation to impressions, the non-unique equivalent metric, it isn't very useful if you're trying to create monthly, quarterly, or any other report that isn't based on daily, 7-day, or 28-day periods.

What are you supposed to do if these metrics are important to you and your reporting period does not align with those that Facebook provides? There are a few options, none of which are ideal. For this purpose, I will assume the desired time period is monthly.

Option 1

Use the 28-day value from the last day of the month. For March, you would have the correct value for March 4-31, but would be missing March 1-3.

It's pretty clear how this doesn't provide a complete picture and can be quite inaccurate, especially if the first three days of the month were strong days. It does, however, provide a uniform method with accurate data, albeit not monthly data.

Option 2

Use the 28-day value from the last day of the month and then try to create a sophisticated calculation that attempts to estimate the two to three days that aren't included in the 28-day value.

You should be able to get to a point where you have values that are closer to the true full month values than with the previous option. The obvious downside is that you're introducing estimated data points that are known to be incorrect.

Option 3

Only use non-unique metrics when reporting at the Page level. In this case, Impressions would replace Reach and Stories would replace People Talking About This.

If you also report at the Post level, you could still report the unique metrics since Facebook only provides lifetime values for Post level metrics. This method would ensure that all your data is accurate and representative of the full month, but it would mean that there are no Page level metrics related to Reach or People Talking About This.

Option 4

Sum all the daily values for the month with a giant asterisk indicating that the values for Reach and People Talking About This related metrics are wildly inaccurate (please don't use this option!).

Summary

There really isn't an ideal solution here. Instead, you have to pick an option that works best for your needs or come up with an alternative solution that works.

As long as you know that the look of some charts in Facebook Insights can be deceiving, you can at least explain the data to other stakeholders and, if necessary, modify how the data gets reported to meet your organizations needs.

Last week the bombshell announcement came that Google was admitting liability and forfeiting roughly $500 million in profits and fees from accepting illegal ads from Canadian pharmacies targeting US residents. This is a historic “fine” according to the US�Department of Justice (DOJ). But new information revealed over the past few days suggests that Google may have avoided a much larger problem: potential criminal prosecution of Google CEO Larry Page.

The DOJ “non-prosecution agreement” explains that Google was on notice since 2003 that licensed and unlicensed Canadian pharmacies were using AdWords to sell drugs to US residents and that the ads violated or potentially violated a number of US laws and FDA regulations. Now the US Attorney in charge of the DOJ probe, Peter Neronha, has said that Larry Page was personally aware of what was going on with the Canadian ads, as well as the fact that the ads were illegal.

Advertisers “Circumvented” Google Controls

It appears that starting in 2003 Google used two third party companies to verify that pharmaceutical advertisers were actually licensed in Canada and/or the US. However many unlicensed pharmacies were apparently able to defeat the system according to the DOJ’s documentation. The DOJ says that, beginning in 2004, Google was “on notice” that advertisers were “circumventing” the certification process and that Google did not prevent the unlawful AdWords from appearing until it became aware of the DOJ investigation.

Here’s what Neronha told the Wall Street Journal:

“Larry Page knew what was going on,” Peter Neronha, the Rhode Island U.S. Attorney who led the probe, said in an interview. “We know it from the investigation. We simply know it from the documents we reviewed, witnesses that we interviewed, that Larry Page knew what was going on” . . .� Mr. Neronha said he didn’t have any plans to prosecute Mr. Page or individual executives, although he said they weren’t off limits.

Is this a case of insufficiently rigorous controls by Google or does it reveal a kind of “willful blindness” or something even worse — an intentional violation of the law for financial gain? Google issued the following statement last week in response to news of the settlement:

“We banned the advertising of prescription drugs in the U.S. by Canadian pharmacies some time ago. However, it�s obvious with hindsight that we shouldn�t have allowed these ads on Google in the first place. Given the extensive coverage this settlement has already received, we won�t be commenting further.”A “Mistake” or Something Willful?

This relatively bland comment asserts Google made a “mistake,” and was not committing a willful violation of the law. However Google critics such as lawyer Gary Reback and Harvard Professor Ben Edelman argue that Google knew the conduct was illegal and sought to profit from it. Reback told USAToday that “Google operated as an illegal drug distribution channel for illegal drug importers and made money doing it.”

Edelman goes further, arguing that this settlement and the underlying conduct outlined by the DOJ “undermines Google’s credibility” across the board:

These admissions and the associated documents confirm what I had long suspected: Not only does Google often ignore its stated “policies”, but in fact Google staff affirmatively assist supposed “rule-breakers” when Google finds it profitable to do so…

Persistent Google critics such as Edelman see this as a “gotcha” moment where Google’s bad behavior is laid bare for all to observe. However I’m less certain this is a conspiracy revealed. But it also doesn’t seem like a simple case of Google not paying close enough attention either.

Postscript: A shareholder civil suit has now been filed against Google’s Board of Directors for breach of fiduciary duty over the episode, seeking unspecified damages.

Bing announced today that they are adding a new social element to their search results with the introduction of Bing Boards. Currently being created by, “…a small group of food and lifestyle bloggers, experts and social influencers,” the Bing Boards are a collection of images, videos and links focused on a specific topic pulled together by the board creator.

“It could be a hobby, a political or social issue, an area of pop culture: the topics are as varied as the people who are interested in them,” claims Bing. According to the announcement, the visual boards will appear in the middle column of a Bing search results page.

The Bing Boards are designed to help users find search results created by people who are passionate about specific topics, and not based on, “…companies or algorithms.” The goal is for more people to create and interact with the Bing Boards, helping Bing decide how they can enhance the social search offering.

Bing provided an example of a Bing Board created by Chelsea Costa, author of the Lovely Indeed blog. Costa’s Bing Board shows up when a user searches Bing for “photo booth backdrop” to help users find ideas for creating their own photo booth backdrops:

Bing confirmed that the Bing Boards were the first of several upcoming social and community experiments they will be announcing.

Just yesterday, Google�announced the beta release of AdWords�Review Extensions, which allow advertisers to include blurbs of third-party reviews in their search ads. The extension could prove especially useful to local businesses and to advertisers who don’t have access to seller rating extensions to add validation to their ads.

We’ve asked Google for some more detail on how Review Extensions (pictured below) work.

What can I use in my reviews? As the two examples above show, the review snippets can either be a direct quote or a summary from a review. Of course, you’ll need to have permission to use the review from the source publication.

Is the publication name a link?��Yes, the publication name (in blue) is a link to the publisher’s website. Advertisers can set the destination URL to the page where the review snippet is sourced from on the publisher’s site.

Do I pay for clicks on the publisher’s name? No, advertisers are not charged for clicks on links to publisher sites.

Is there a character limit on Review Extensions?�Yes, the character limit on Review Extensions in 67, and that includes the name of the publication.

How will Google prevent abuse of this extension?�You’re not alone if you immediately started thinking about ways scammers and spammers will try to abuse Review Extensions. Google clearly wants to make sure�this extension doesn’t become rife with bogus reviews from less-than-credible sites. According to the policy, each review must come from a “reputable 3rd party source”.�Google also states that �”automated and human-based systems” will be used to review and validate all review extensions. �I’m waiting to hear more on how they are qualifying a reputable source.

How do I participate in the beta?�Contact your AdWords rep. There is no sign-up form for consideration at this point.

Google says they’ll be adding support for Review Extensions in the UI soon. They are available globally in English only at this time.

Search for “edward snowden petition” on Google�to find the petition filed through the White House�petitions�site, and you’ll see something odd. The petition has no description, because the White House won’t let Google crawl the page. But it’s not a move against Snowden, as some might think. It’s part of how the petitions site has worked with search engines for some time.

Here’s how the listing looks:

Notice the description: “A description for this result is not available because of the site’s robot.txt — learn more.”

iAcquire noted the oddity this week, that the page is listed, but with this odd description. The description is explaining that the page has been blocked from Google and other search engines such as Bing from indexing it.

How can a page that’s blocked still be listed? This is what’s known as a “link only” listing, where Google can guess at what the page is about from other pages linking to it to form a title. But, it can’t generate a description nor gather any information from the page itself, because it’s blocked, and Google cannot access the content on the page to show a description of the page.

In fact, all new petitions on the White House site are blocked like this, and have been since 2011, as shown by this copy of the robots.txt file via the Way Back Machine.

Why would this happen? The White House is blocking petitions that are below a certain threshold. Page that gain enough signatures get an official response, and that also means they get a new page in an area of the site (the responses area) that isn’t blocked.

The White House has a page explaining the threshold needed, though it doesn’t explain the search engine blocking. However, our understanding is that this is how things work — pages below a threshold of signatures don’t get indexed, mainly to help prevent people who might try to use the White House site to generate spam.

Get enough signatures, and you’re guaranteed a response — and also deemed Google-worthy. Snowden’s petition actually has over the required amount, so it should get an official response in the near future, and one that will be fully indexed by Google.

Just yesterday, Google�announced the beta release of AdWords�Review Extensions, which allow advertisers to include blurbs of third-party reviews in their search ads. The extension could prove especially useful to local businesses and to advertisers who don’t have access to seller rating extensions to add validation to their ads.

We’ve asked Google for some more detail on how Review Extensions (pictured below) work.

What can I use in my reviews? As the two examples above show, the review snippets can either be a direct quote or a summary from a review. Of course, you’ll need to have permission to use the review from the source publication.

Is the publication name a link?��Yes, the publication name (in blue) is a link to the publisher’s website. Advertisers can set the destination URL to the page where the review snippet is sourced from on the publisher’s site.

Do I pay for clicks on the publisher’s name? No, advertisers are not charged for clicks on links to publisher sites.

Is there a character limit on Review Extensions?�Yes, the character limit on Review Extensions in 67, and that includes the name of the publication.

How will Google prevent abuse of this extension?�You’re not alone if you immediately started thinking about ways scammers and spammers will try to abuse Review Extensions. Google clearly wants to make sure�this extension doesn’t become rife with bogus reviews from less-than-credible sites. According to the policy, each review must come from a “reputable 3rd party source”.�Google also states that �”automated and human-based systems” will be used to review and validate all review extensions. �I’m waiting to hear more on how they are qualifying a reputable source.

How do I participate in the beta?�Contact your AdWords rep. There is no sign-up form for consideration at this point.

Google says they’ll be adding support for Review Extensions in the UI soon. They are available globally in English only at this time.

It has always been difficult for Twitter users to get specific stats about their impact on Twitter, such as how many times a tweet has been favorited, the number of retweets, and how many replied a tweet received. While you might notice it on the fly, it can be hard for Twitter users to spot trends in their tweets, such as the type of content that is most popular with their followers.

To access the Twitter Analytics, simply go to ads.twitter.com and login with your Twitter account information. Click the Analytics link to see your Twitter stats for favorites, retweets and reply interactions.

The data can also be downloaded as a CSV file. The information is basic, and is the same information that business users have had for some time. But for smaller businesses and marketers, having this information at a glance is helpful without having to resort to a third-party tool.

Hopefully Twitter will expand their analytics offerings. It would be great for Twitter to include even more information in their analytics, especially for marketers using Twitter for business.

It would be useful to know whether it is the same people retweeting and favoriting tweets, or if it is different people everytime. Knowing the overall reach of each tweet based on retweets would be helpful, such as knowing how many followers those retweets went to.

This will also have the added bonus that it will get more Twitter users familiar with their advertising, since you need to login to the ad platform in order to access analytics data. Even if a small percentage of users test Twitter ads or tell others about Twitter advertising, it would be a net win for Twitter, particularly since Twitter has seemed to struggle a bit in getting advertisers on board with their fairly new ad system.

It's astonishing how often a potential client contacts me about link building for their site, only to discover their site isn't anywhere near link worthy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm always confident in my ability to build links. But building great links to a terrible site is like polishing a turd.

Perhaps that's harsh, but it's the simple truth. Link building is frickin' hard if your site sucks – and even then, it probably isn't helpful.

Honestly, no one wants to link to a domain name like cheapdiscountmysterymeat.com. No one wants to link to an ecommerce domain that only has product pages, bare minimum content, and sells discount yoga music. No one wants to link to a website that looks spammy or as if it's been around since 1995 (and never updated once).

These are obviously extreme examples, but I'll say it again. It's frickin' hard to build links if your site sucks.

Potential Client Checklist

If you're going to work hard to increase your site's visibility, make sure it's worth sharing. It doesn't make any sense to dump time, energy, money, and general resources into it if the site's underdeveloped, lacks content, or is simply outdated.

Here's what I look for when a potential client contacts me for link building services – and if these aren't there, we're either having a serious conversation or they aren't a client:

A sensible, non-spammy domain nameFree of suspicious/manipulative practicesDecent site content, including:A well-managed blogPage copySolid product descriptionsSigns of fresh contentClean, intuitive user interfaceClean, sharp aestheticsA well-formed contact and about us page (no one's interested in linking to a site that doesn't even have contact information)This includes clear and easy ways to contact the site owner/company, preferably both email and phoneIntuitive/obvious site navigationA cohesive theme across the siteA search bar/search function somewhere on the site for easy product searchGeneral appeal – avoiding complete siloing (i.e. diesel powered underwater generators)A clean robot.txt – very basic, but can cause all sorts of problems if messed up

Generally speaking, that's what I look for. More than anything, though, examining a website is a sense developed with time and experience. Within the industry it's commonly referred to as the "smell test" – basically you know if something stinks.

With Penguin and Panda there's a real need to build links that help humans, not solely designed for search engines (which would be manipulative). I call this FTBOM (pronounced 'footbomb') – for the betterment of mankind.

The links we build need to be highly relevant and make sense. They should be on sites that a real human would habitat, used in a way that a real human would click through and be happy about the destination.

Build links like Google doesn't exist – links that are creative, helpful, and useful not just to the linkee but to the linker and clicker, as well.

And if we're holding ourselves to these standards, why would we build links for websites that suck and are counter to the direction we're working toward?

It's Frickin' Easy to Build Great Links to Great Sites

Building great links for a client with a great site, simply said, is great. It's a complete win-win. We're able to go out and build great links with much less effort than we'd use for even an average site.

Other websites are more likely to link with considerably less persuasion, and we aren't forced to rely on clever strategies and tactics. The value is already there, built into the website itself – there's no need for us to provide, manufacture, or otherwise sell value.

At the end of the day the best links are always built based upon this inherent value. That's what linking is – a vote of confidence, a physical recommendation of trust. One site saying "I think that going to this site will be worth your time, and here it is".

When a site is truly great, building that link becomes a natural process. You find other great and authoritative sites, reach out and express the value of your website, and why their visitors would be benefited by a link from their site to yours.

No strategies, no tactics, no manipulation, no subtlety. Just straightforward honesty, with everyone happy. The client gets great links, the linking website's visitors aren't misled and provided a valuable resource, and we get to go home knowing we made the Internet a better place.

Build Links, Add Value

The simple truth to the Internet is added value. If you want to be successful, find a way to add value, consistently.

Finding a way to add value isn't easy, obviously. But if you're willing to put the time, energy, and creativity into making a great site, everything else will be easier for it.

The old expression "well begun is half done" comes to mind, as do "What is once well done is done forever" and "If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?".

Simply said, if you're going to do something, you may as well take the time to do it right. Otherwise, you'll regret it. Cutting corners never pays off in the long run, and in the end will result in more time spent with continual fixes or an entire rework.

It all starts with building something actually valuable – set yourself apart from the competition, make yourself unique, and add overall value. The sharing and linking will come naturally after that, with minimal elbow grease.

I've said it before and I'll say it again – the best link building tool ever created was the human brain. Start with value and it will pay off in spades.

Google is now showing Google+ logos and icons for company profiles in the rich snippets portion of their search results listings.

Ross Hudgens spotted the Google+ icon displayed next to the search result for the company’s listing. Rel=publisher markup is not required for the logo to show up. I believe all that is required is for the company to have a Google+ page that has their website verified in their Google+ profile.

For example, travelstart.co.za ranks for [flights] in Google South Africa. Notice the Google+ logo:

They clearly have no rel=publisher markup code on their home page. In fact, if you analyze the page with the structured data tool, you will notice there is no schema on the page at all. However, if you look at their Google+ profile page, you will notice they have a verified website listing.

Less than two months ago, Google told us that publishership isn’t coming to Google anytime soon. In fact, they told us they had “no plans” to bring it to the search results. While it’s true that this is not using publisher code, it does look like the concept of author snippets are coming to Google’s search results as publisher snippets.

You can see the same even in Google.com for [Phoenix East Aviation]:

They happen to have rel=publisher markup on the page but also have a verified website in their Google+ profile.

If this does happen to be coming to Google’s search results, you better expect to see more and more adoption of rel=publisher markup and Google+ adoption by businesses, non-profits and other organizations in the near future.

Postscript: This seems to have stopped working so perhaps this was a test or a bug? Google has not given us an official comment.

Paid search spend in the US increased 7 percent year-over-year in Q2 2013, according to IgnitionOne’s latest Digital Marketing�Report. That’s up from a 2 percent YoY increase seen in Q1, though IgnitionOne found that total search spend fell quarter-over-quarter. Clicks and impressions both rose 5 percent, and CPCs ticked up 2 percent YoY.

The retailer category stood out in terms of growth in Q2, both compared to the previous year and to Q1. Impressions rose 24 percent, and paid search spending jumped 18 percent year-over-year. IgnitionOne says Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs) are driving the growth in spend in the retailer vertical.

While smartphone CPCs fell 13% overall, IgnitionOne says enhanced campaigns are pushing mobile CPCs for position one — the key spot on smartphone results — way up. When asked about this, IgnitionOne President, Roger Barnette, said in a statement, that CPCs are skyrocketing for the top spot of smartphone ads “for the very narrow selection of our marketers who have migrated to Enhanced Campaigns.”

Among the small set of IgnitionOne’s client set that had migrated to enhanced campaigns in Q2, the company did see increases in both cost and CPCs. The company concludes, “Presumably, this is driven by two main factors: an�increase in competition in the mobile (smartphone) and tablet space as well as a loss of granular/keyword�level control of the mobile and tablet channels. This increase in competition comes from forcing more�advertisers into mobile and tablet.”

IgnitionOne is seeing the increased competition forcing advertisers to raise their budgets to maintain their previous levels of traffic share. As many advertisers can’t raise budgets, IgnitionOne says they are seeing “a decline in both clicks and click-through-rate as pre-GEC advertisers are forced to share the traffic with newcomers…. Marketers are paying more for previously cheaper traffic, and therefore can afford less.”

The company anticipates they’ll continue to see these effects through the full migration to enhanced campaigns.

When Google announced their move to enhanced campaigns in February, many thought that Google had gone too far. Pundits said that it was a sign that their empire was sure to crumble. Who was Google to treat advertisers and agencies this shabbily?

I wasn't immune to the feelings of helplessness and contempt as we faced a huge migration and a perceived loss of control of our clients' search budgets.

Fast-forward just four months and I have a confession to make: I love enhanced campaigns! Once I got past the fact that Google had just forced a massive organizational change on us and everyone else, it started to become clear that these changes can benefit a lot more than just Google investors pockets.

So if you haven't migrated already, or you have migrated but aren't doing anything differently, here are some good reasons to adopt enhanced campaign functionality as soon as possible.

Get Your PLAs on Mobile

Enhanced campaigns give retail advertisers the opportunity to get their product listing ads in front of a mobile audience. This isn't available to PLA campaigns that haven't yet been "enhanced."

While the PLA experience today on mobile is generally comprised of ecommerce advertisers, longer term this will be inventory that will be setting the stage for local promotions and availability front and center on the mobile device.

Armed with years of data on the efficiency of markets relative to one another, these ratios can now be easily implemented and stored within AdWords to be leveraged across all campaigns.

Reduce Budget Partitioning Headaches

Who ever really knew how to budget for mobile relative to desktop anyways? It was always an artificial distinction driven by historical data that was changing wildly from month to month.

That doesn't matter anymore. Just set a budget for your search campaign and bid optimize to account for the relative value of the two traffic sources.

Use Consistent Metrics Across Device

As a corollary to the above, enhanced campaigns force better alignment between how mobile, desktop, and tablet campaigns are managed.

While Google would like you to believe that mobile bid adjustments should be close to zero, this figure should vary from business to business depending on that advertisers ability to turn mobile campaigns into dollars.

Enhanced campaigns force that comparison as opposed to having advertisers arbitrarily say that mobile deserves significant budgets because it's "the future."

You Should Pay More For Tablet Traffic

We all can acknowledge that it was pretty much unfair that we were paying a lower CPC for a higher qualified, more affluent customer on a tablet.

This move by Google to combine that traffic with desktop traffic should be a wake up call to get your mobile experience in gear and generate the revenue from it that you deserve.

Make Magic With Sitelinks

Perhaps the greatest benefit of enhanced campaigns is the flexibility it offers around using sitelinks. The ability to vary sitelinks at the ad group level and schedule their rotation enables much richer ad experiences.

For instance, you are now able to offer single product offers via sitelinks as opposed to generic sitewide offers. You can also enable phone numbers only when call center reps are available to your customers.

Summary

You can argue with the way enhanced campaigns were forced upon us. However, the results are undeniable. It's time to embrace enhanced campaigns for what they can do for you, and stop whining about what they did to you.

Inventory-aware campaigns in DoubleClick Search, designed to automate campaign management for inventory-reliant search campaigns, are getting even more dynamic. DoubleClick Search now�automatically creates�ad groups, ads and keyword lists for inventory-aware campaigns based on your settings.

Launched back in August as “inventory management,” inventory-aware campaigns integrate with Google Merchant Center to apply changes to search campaigns based on the inventory levels and other settings like�prices, descriptions and landing pages�in a retailer’s feed.�Until this latest update, advertisers set up the ads and keywords themselves.

A few things to note when managing inventory-aware campaigns: ad groups in inventory-aware campaigns cannot be modified. Changing any properties of a keyword will “detach” the keyword from inventory management, and you won’t be able to recreate that keyword in the inventory managed campaign again. While you can add new ad copy to ad groups, you cannot change or pause generated ad copy.

With 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created every day, marketers are challenged to stand out amongst the sheer volume of information confronting their target audience.

At the same time, information overload drives consumers to filter their choices to those few who are most trusted, credible and meaningful.�Becoming known as �the best answer� for your domain of expertise wields incredible influence on the search and social web.

When consumers are empowered to create, consume, publish, interact and transact anytime, anywhere, how do brands break through to create meaningful connections and engagement? How does the dynamic of content and influence help fulfill consumer information discovery, consumption and engagement expectations while delivering on business outcomes for the brand?

As a vehicle for influence, content is one of the most powerful tools in a marketer’s mix to attract, engage and inspire action.�Content is the currency for building relationships that can boost credibility, influence and action.

I think investing in a content and influencer marketing strategy can be one of the most impactful actions a marketing and communications organization can make. �By incorporating relevant influencers that can inspire action with your content marketing efforts, you can reach new audiences with brand messages that are credible and trusted. �

Influencer driven content marketing is one of the best examples of how digital marketing and public relations are converging. The integration of messaging, content, social media and engagement right along with performance measurement and business outcomes should be the focus of any business that wants to differentiate and grow.

Does that mean go after the people with the highest social network follower counts? Not unless you can demonstrate their ability to influence action. With influencer marketing, it’s essential to make the distinction between an egomaniac that spends all their time trying to be famous and a practitioner that connects with their communities in a meaningful way and creates real, measurable impact. Here’s a handy guide from Traackr�an presentation from OpenView Venture Partners and an article from KISSmetrics to help with the process of influencer identification.

Whether your brand is engaging with influencers to provide useful information or you’re co-creating content with influencers, there’s a value exchange that benefits everyone involved. Content is the key to that value transfer between brand and consumer, brand and influencer and for the overall community involved.

What are you doing to discover and engage with influencers in your target market? Is becoming more influential as a brand part of your content marketing strategy?

Google officially rolled out its local carousal results to all U.S. users last week for select verticals like hotels and restaurants, and since then, marketers have been trying to figure out what makes it tick.

Two search agencies independently conducted experiments of their own to see where people click when presented with the new carousel in Google local results. While these tests were largely informal and consisting of a small sample size, they are still interesting to note.

Local U and Ethical SEO Consulting had a combined sample of 112 respondents in their separate experiments. Searchers were given a prompt search results page, and asked to go to the part of the page that was most relevant to them for that search.

Here’s what one of those search result options looked like to respondents for the query: "pizza in Denver":

What the Local Carousel Result Studies Found

Both studies showed the map and carousel results on the page were favorite areas for users to click in order to find what they were looking for.

The "pizza in Denver" results showed the map result received 32 percent of the clicks, followed by the first image in the carousel at 17 percent, and then the first organic result at 11 percent.

The other experiment used the query "Chicago restaurants" to generate a results page, and found 48 percent of the total clicks were on the carousel results:

When asked why the searchers clicked where they did within the carousel, the Chicago restaurants respondents mentioned reviews as a determining factor.

What Does It Mean?

People are clicking on the carousel to find what they need. But more studies will need to be conducted to truly understand how the new carousel results in Google are impacting overall click-through rate on the results page.

Both Ethical SEO consulting and Local U and commented on the challenges and opportunities of the new look and feel of Google local results.

"One challenge with images is that Google is not letting you choose what picture to display on the front page. They choose it for you from the images that are uploaded," Local U said in its post.

Ethical SEO consulting also noted that reviews were going to continue to be important, and added, "having a long tail keyword site content strategy is also going to be an important factor in showing up in as many carousels, and map results as possible. The organic results also cannot be discounted."

Google officially rolled out its local carousal results to all U.S. users last week for select verticals like hotels and restaurants, and since then, marketers have been trying to figure out what makes it tick.

Two search agencies independently conducted experiments of their own to see where people click when presented with the new carousel in Google local results. While these tests were largely informal and consisting of a small sample size, they are still interesting to note.

Local U and Ethical SEO Consulting had a combined sample of 112 respondents in their separate experiments. Searchers were given a prompt search results page, and asked to go to the part of the page that was most relevant to them for that search.

Here’s what one of those search result options looked like to respondents for the query: "pizza in Denver":

What the Local Carousel Result Studies Found

Both studies showed the map and carousel results on the page were favorite areas for users to click in order to find what they were looking for.

The "pizza in Denver" results showed the map result received 32 percent of the clicks, followed by the first image in the carousel at 17 percent, and then the first organic result at 11 percent.

The other experiment used the query "Chicago restaurants" to generate a results page, and found 48 percent of the total clicks were on the carousel results:

When asked why the searchers clicked where they did within the carousel, the Chicago restaurants respondents mentioned reviews as a determining factor.

What Does It Mean?

People are clicking on the carousel to find what they need. But more studies will need to be conducted to truly understand how the new carousel results in Google are impacting overall click-through rate on the results page.

Both Ethical SEO consulting and Local U and commented on the challenges and opportunities of the new look and feel of Google local results.

"One challenge with images is that Google is not letting you choose what picture to display on the front page. They choose it for you from the images that are uploaded," Local U said in its post.

Ethical SEO consulting also noted that reviews were going to continue to be important, and added, "having a long tail keyword site content strategy is also going to be an important factor in showing up in as many carousels, and map results as possible. The organic results also cannot be discounted."

KitchMe, a recipe and meal-planning website recently acquired by Coupons.com, has launched what appears to be the first recipe search engine and cooking assistant app for Google Glass.

The app is free and currently available at kitchme.com/googleglass.

I wore Glass in my own kitchen about a month ago and immediately thought it would be fun to be able to use it to get cooking directions, and that’s the main thing KitchMe’s app does. There are a few extra bells and whistles for existing KitchMe users, but I’m not one, so my testing is focused primarily on the recipe search engine.

The app invites you to speak an ingredient (or multiple ingredients) and sends your search to its database to find matches. Within a minute or two, KitchMe then sends back matching recipes that have at least a four-star rating. In my testing, the app sent back anywhere from 3-6 recipes for each search I did.

Those are the three recipes I received on a search for “sirloin steak.” They’re not the top three matches on KitchMe.com for the same search, but they are in the top 10 results. (It’s not clear to me why the app results aren’t the same as the website.)

Once you choose a recipe, the app provides a list of ingredients and step-by-step cooking directions.

Tapping on each step will tell Glass to read the instruction aloud. Each cooking step is on its own card, which means some recipes will require a lot of swiping. (That’s why I had more voice commands like “move left” and “move right” on my list of 14 things Google Glass needs.) KitchMe says a future version of its app could enable fully hands-free navigation.

One thing I’d like to see KitchMe do — and maybe it already does for existing users — is let me customize how many recipes I get back for each search.

Another oversight the app makes is not indicating where each recipe comes from. According to its website search results, the sirloin steak recipes above are from (L-R) Food.com, AllRecipes and Food Network. That should be included in the app’s interface, too.

Those things aside, KitchMe looks like it could be a winner with a recipe search app that appeals to a much wider audience than many of the existing Glass apps. KitchMe and the promised Trulia real estate search app stand to be two of the more mainstream Glass apps around and could even help sell Glass itself to general consumers (along with existing apps like Facebook, Twitter, CNN and the New York Times).

Social intelligence company Syncapse set out to answer why people become Facebook fans in its latest study and what the value of a fan is to a brand. The research found 78 percent of a brand’s Facebook fans have already engaged with the brand's product or services.

"Since being a brand user is usually a prerequisite to becoming a Fan in consumer goods categories, marketers should prioritize their Fan acquisition investments on converting existing customers," Syncapse said in its report. "Not only is acquisition cost and conversion friction lower, but the investment in a higher quality Fan base will reap rewards down the line, and this is true for both lower-cost and higher-cost consumer brands."

But there are other motivators for people becoming fans of a brand on Facebook, including wanting coupons or discounts or sharing personal experiences and interests with others.

But Syncapse warns that acquiring fans through discount offers often lead to a lower value overall for the brand.

"Many brands, particularly retailers and lower-cost brands with high purchase frequencies, often resort to rewards and direct-response incentives for driving Fan membership. However, these tactics are often blindly targeted to brand-promiscuous deal hunters, resulting in a lower-quality, fickle Fan membership (and waste of scarce marketing dollars)."

So just how much is the value of a Facebook fan?

Syncapse took into account several factors in its study including spending, loyalty, propensity to recommend, earned media value, acquisition cost and brand affinity when answering this question. The total value of a fan based on these factors is estimated to be $174 – a 28 percent increase since 2010.

But the true value in a fan, Syncapse argued, is measured by the motivation behind becoming a fan in the first place. While discounts and contests may drive a brand’s fan base up quickly, many of those Fans aren't likely to have staying power.

"After understanding the composition of social membership, it becomes critical for marketers to understand the reasons consumers become Fans of brands in the first place," Syncapse said. "Marketers must compare actual reasons for becoming a Fan, and the hard tactics (and often expensive investments) they often deploy to acquire Fans – sometimes they match up, sometimes they don't. There may be more effective and efficient strategies to acquire more of the right types of Fans."

Many of you might think there is no longer any need for tools to monitor your ranking in search engines like Google. After all, just by visiting Google Webmaster Tools you get visibility, ranking and click through information for each region, timeframe and search result type straight from the source.

The main drawback of using Google Webmaster Tools for ranking information, however, is that a view only ends up in the report when someone visited the page your website was on. If you rank beyond the first two result pages your search result is seldom seen and reported on.

So why would you want to know if you ranked 30th place for some obscure keyword combination? The main reason is link building. It is great to track how link building affects your ranking. Knowing what effect specific links have on your ranking makes your SEO effort much more effective.

Setting up Rank Monitoring

To get a great grasp on ranking effect you’ll need to monitor various keywords in multiple themes and several levels of competitiveness.

Once you’ve set up perfect SEO pages for each of these keywords their initial ranking shows in which theme your current link profile can compete against existing players.

Automated Ranking Checks

Tools that offer automated ranking checks have some disadvantages. The main one being Google really doesn’t like it. Ranking monitoring tools like SEOmoz, SEO Effect, Conductor, and Rio SEO have probably all seen their service break down when Google blocked their crawlers.

When personalized search becomes more important for ranking, these tools won’t be able to mimic user characteristics and they’ll need local crawlers to provide more accurate reporting (but that also applies to your manual checks).

When choosing the service that fits your needs, make sure you can monitor all your keywords in one account. Also choose a provider with local crawlers. For the European market SEO Effect provides great local coverage.

From Links to Ranking

If you have a broad link profile, you’ll see that you’ll reach top 10 positions for less competitive keywords across a wide range of themes. Top 30 positions will show what keywords are currently just beyond your grasp and keywords barely within the top 50 show there is still a long way to go, but you might just get there some day.

When you gather links within a more specific theme you should see ranking for more competitive keywords, but very little ranking effect will be seen beyond the thematic scope of your effort.

To achieve top 10 positions for more competitive keywords, you might just want to focus more on just that keyword combination, but this also brings a lot of risk. Once Google mistakes common denominators on large groups of links for unnatural behavior your link profile might collapse entirely.

The best link profiles have multiple layers of link building activities. These build up theme-by-theme and activity-by-activity. Few characteristics should show commonalities between these clusters of links. By continuously monitoring your ranking, you know which theme your next link building effort should focus on.

Using Ranking Information

Don’t share too much ranking information with your manager or clients. When people don’t sufficiently understand the basics of SEO, they will blame each individual effort, even though it might just have been the effort of your competitor, an algorithm change or the effect of time. You don’t want a lot of nervous people with each minute ranking shift.

Use ranking information to see if your effort moves it in the right direction, but don’t just give up when it doesn’t, at first. Some approaches with a great short-term ranking effect might not last very long.

In another move to beef up its retargeting offerings–and take on retargeting platforms like Adroll, Retargeter and Mediaforge–Google is rolling out dynamic retargeting to all AdWords retail customers with Google Merchant Feeds. The company�is also piloting dynamic retargeting in the travel and education sectors and plans to expand availability to more sectors later this year.

With dynamic retargeting ads are created on the fly with product images pulled from your Google Merchant feed. Google’s product recommendation engine determines which products and messages are shown based on an algorithmic prediction for what is likely to perform best based on visitors� past actions on your site, including the products�they viewed and their purchase history, as well as related products�and top performing products.

For example, if a person is shopping for pots and pans, the product recommendation engine may populate the ad with the pot set they last viewed, other top selling pot sets, and kitchen utensils and small appliances.

There are multiple�templates that you can customize to reflect the design elements of your brand. Layouts are optimized automatically for each ad impression.

In pilot tests, Google says that Sierra Trading Post, a U.S. retailer of outdoor gear and clothing, saw click through rate double and conversion rate increase by 5x. European �heavy metal online shop,��EMP Merchandising’s conversion rates rose by 230%�and the cost of sale fell by 30%.

In the ModCloth template, the ad shows a recently viewed dress with price details along with other related products.

When setting up a dynamic retargeting campaign, in addition to the “All visitors” list, Google automatically creates four lists that reflect four groups of site visitors:

General visitors�-�People who visited your website but didn’t view specific product.�The dynamic ad will include the most popular products from your site.

Product viewers�-�People who viewed specific product pages on your site but did not add them to the shopping cart.�The dynamic ad will show the products that your visitors viewed and mix in recommended products.

Shopping cart abandoners�-�People who added products to the shopping cart but didn’t complete the purchase.�The dynamic ad will prioritize items added into the shopping cart, and will mix in a few other viewed products and recommended products.Past buyers�-�People who purchased products from you in the past.�The dynamic ad will show related products by looking at popular items and items commonly purchased together.

To get started, you’ll can edit your existing remarketing tag if you are using one already, or you’ll need to add the dynamic remarketing tag AdWords generates for your site�across all your site pages along with several custom parameters.

When people visit your site, the remarketing tag adds them to one of the remarketing list and associates the product ID with the visit.�AdWords then uses the product ID to pull the product image, name, and price from your Google Merchant Center account and include in the ad. You can add additional parameters to the tag to for more advanced bidding and optimization control.

The sheer number of people potentially affected by the approaching Hurricane Irene means that the web is experiencing an incredible amount of traffic from those seeking information. Hitwise reports�that searches for Hurricane Irene have increased more than 2300% since August 21. Thankfully, there are plenty of resources online where people along the heavily-populated East Coast (and elsewhere) are able to access information about evacuations and planning.

Official New York Sources

The official web site for New York City, NYC.gov, has reportedly been difficult to access at some times today. At one point, the city government turned to other web presences — including the mayor’s own site, a Tumblr blog and a number of Twitter accounts. It appears the city government has now trimmed down NYC.gov to focus its homepage solely on Irene, likely in an effort to speed loading times.

Federal Government Resources

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are providing Irene information not only on their web sites, but also on mobile versions of their sites, for those headed to evacuation centers or in frantic search of D batteries — and they might come in handy if the power goes out (at least as long as cell phones remain charged).

Besides the mobile site, the NHC also provides a variety of alert services, including via Twitter. Meanwhile, NASA is providing images ad video from the international space station, which helps viewers to get a sense of the sheer size of the storm.

Other Local Resources

You may not be in Irene’s path, but with some of the resources available online you can get very close to what’s happening on the ground.

With RadioReference.com, you can listen directly to first responders (police, ambulances, fire crews, etc.) in the affected areas.

On Trafficland.com, you can check out live feeds from traffic cameras in the areas.

Local news radio stations, like stations WTOP in DC, KYW in Philadelphia, WINS in New York and WBZ in Boston will also provide the local, more in-depth perspective that you’re not likely to get from national sources. Other local stations can be found at TuneIn.com.Public radio station WNYC in New York City is providing an evacuation zone finder�(using Google Maps)�where you input your address and it lets you know your residence’s status.State offices of emergency management are also available on Twitter: Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts. Rhode Island, (It looks like Pennsylvania is only on Facebook.)Google.org

Google.org has a crisis response center organized around Hurricane Irene, with a interactive map overlaid with information from everyone from the Red Cross to NOAA, including a lot of the Federal and NYC resources mentioned above. Be sure to zoom in on NYC, where it’s easy to see evacuation zones.

Feel free to chime in, in the comments, with other useful hurricane-related resources.

Good news for Google advertisers looking to expand their advertising performance with dynamic remarketing for their products. Google has announced the launch of their dynamic remarketing program to all clients with a Google Merchant Center account. This pilot program is currently only available to those in the travel and education sectors, but they do plan to expand further later this year.

Here's what the ads look like:

These ads are remarketing ads, as merchants are able to create dynamic ads that feature products a visitor has previously seen on the company's website, in order to remind those potential customers about the product. Google can also create those dynamic remarketing ads for merchants automatically.

Google has some impressive numbers coming out of what seems to be the beta test of this product with a limited number of Google Merchant Center users. For example, Sierra Trading Post saw two times higher click-through rates and a five times higher conversion rate when compared to traditional remarketing campaigns.

Google also does auto optimization behind the scenes, to adjust to serve the best performing layouts on a per impression basis. It will also automatically generate recommended, related and popular products to display in those ads. It also features the real-time bidding algorithm.

Using the dynamic remarketing requires a Google Merchant Center account. Currently, Google Merchant Center accounts are only available in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States. For more information on using dynamic remarketing, see this Google AdWords help article.

For more information on Google's remarketing products, including the remarketing tag and remarketing with Google analytics, you can register for Google's Learn with Google Webinar: Reaching the Right Audience with Remarketing, taking place Wednesday, June 26 at 1 p.m. ET.

Today is the birthday of Antoni Gaudí, a Spanish architect born in 1852 who was considered an important figure in the “Modernisme” movement of that time. Many of Gaudí’s structures still stand today as some of the most revered works of architecture in the world. His contributions were honored with a Google Doodle today representing some of his most loved works.

If you look closely (and try really hard to interpret the abstraction), you can see “Google” spelled out in the structures referenced in the Doodle. Condé Nast did a great piece identifying which illustration in the Doodle matched which Gaudí piece, along with a write up of where they can be viewed in person.

Gaudí left a bigger legacy than perhaps he would have imagined. It’s not just completed structures that made a mark. According to The Guardian, Gaudí’s Roman basilica continued to be worked on and built upon over the span of approximately 130 years, long after Gaudí’s untimely accidental death.

They're the biggest descriptor of your business, your self-identifier, and you don't just use them in search. When you have those uncomfortable "So, what do you do?" conversations with the person next to you on an airplane, a keyword is one of the first things out of your mouth.

My point is that keywords are how people remember you, so you need to think more about how they reflect what you do rather than how much they're searched when choosing the right ones for you.

My digital agency is rebranding, which means a new website, new logo, new target audience and new marketing messaging. That also means a whole new set of keywords. Here's how we figured them out.

Who Are You?

Many dive into keyword research without first taking a hard look at the business itself. That feels backwards. Before you can know how you want users to find you, you need to know how the company positions itself.

You may already have a good idea if you're working with company that's been around for a while, but since we're rebranding, we started from scratch. During our branding discussions, we asked questions like:

If your company was a car, how would you describe it?How would you describe your company culture?What are your company's core values?What's your company's mission? The vision?Who do you want to buy from your company?Who are the decision makers? Decision influencers?Market Research

The first place to start in doing keyword research is with your users. Don't get me wrong: Google's Keyword Tools is great for brainstorming variations and validating your opinions with numbers, but you should never rely on a bot to tell you what your users are doing.

By putting together a simple survey in SurveyMonkey – or simply asking people in your local coffee shop if your target audience is more broad – you're able to glean a lot about how users actually search.

How many of you have had the "you really don't know what keywords your users would use to search for your business" conversation with a client?

Ask them questions like:

How do you find a company for XXXX?What would you type into Google to find these companies?If you were looking for advice on XXXX, what would you do?What's the most important thing you look for on a XXXX company's home page?

When we did this, we sent out the survey to existing clients who fit our new target, CMO and marketing organizations and promoted through social media to garner feedback.

Informational vs. Commercial Searches

Your user research will tell you a lot about how people actually search, but you do ultimately need to run what they gave you through Google's Keyword Tool to get an idea of traffic and Moz's Keyword Difficulty to get an idea of what it's going to take to see the fruits of your labor.

Traffic isn't the last stop in the vetting process, though. Next, think about the type of query your keyword triggers. Users search because they're looking for an answer to a question, and that comes with some sort of action. The two biggest are:

Informational: Your user is still researching and just wants more information about a topic.Commercial: Your user is looking for a business and ready to buy.

You don't want a commercial-based page ranking for an informational-based keyword because you're failing to reach people at the right phase of the buying process.

Lastly Go To Google

Ultimately, you want to ensure you're comparable with the company you keep, meaning the companies who are using your potential keywords should be your actual competitors, not just your search competitors. So, search for your keywords and see who's ranking.

For example, "web design company" has much more traffic but "web design agency" brings up a higher quality of businesses. This was further validated by our market research when we found more C-level marketers use agency over company or firm, and those are the people we are trying to reach.

Summary

Even if you aren't going through a complete rebrand, you need to keep an eye on your keywords and ensure they still fit with how you do business. Users will continue to get savvier, search engines will become more sophisticated, and your company's priorities will change, and making sure your keywords bring more to the table than just a high search volume will make sure you're always positioning yourself right to your users.

We’ve covered the launch of Facebook Graph Search, explored how it differs from Google search but now it’s time for the hands-on. Come along for a tour of how it works.

Sign-Up & Wait�

To get started, you have to sign-up, where you’ll be added to a waiting list. There’s no particular ETA of when you’ll actually have it enabled:

Expect it to likely take days and possibly weeks, especially if you’re late to signing-up. But when it happens, you’ll see a notice like this:

The New Search “Box” That’s Not A Box

Once you’ve turned on Graph Search, you’ll see the old-style search box go away to be replaced with the new bolder look:

The tricky thing is that it’s not a new box that is taking over, not at first glance. Instead, you have to start typing in the “Search for people, places and things” area to get a search box to appear:

It’s a clever idea, because it helps avoid confusion with people trying to search within that other important box on Facebook, the status update box.

The search box, as you can see above, also suggests some initial search topics, such as:

Restaurants nearbyMusic my friends likePhotos I have likedLooking For Photos

The “Photos I have liked” search is pretty cool:

It’s hard to believe you couldn’t do this on Facebook before. It also made me smile, because I have a lot of friends with kids who share pictures of them doing cute and adorable things. So my “Photos I have liked” stream was full of happy pictures.

It becomes even more compelling how this will allow you to do a better job of going through your content on Facebook itself, as you drill into more suggestions, such as the “Photos I’ve Liked & Commented on” search:

That’s an awesome type of search I’d have never thought to do. Biddy Biddy.

But how about exploring beyond your own content. Sure. Anyone for photos taken in a particular place? Say Newport Beach? And say, in a particular time, like 2012? Facebook’s got you covered:

Looking For People

Enough with pictures and their thousands of words. Let’s look for people, which is currently the main search activity people do on Facebook. They’re typically trying to find people they know. But now, they can discover new people, say “People Nearby” their current location:

That reminds me. I really need to catch up with Dave McClure.

How about people who work for Google and live in Sydney? Yeah, Facebook can and did do that for me. I won’t show those results, because it’s hard for me to tell if I’m seeing some of the people because of information that’s only visible to me.

But these kinds of searches along with others are possible, such as people I know who went to my college and live in Washington DC or people who went to my college in 1988:

Don’t trust that guy. Nah, trust him. Good taste in films.

Then there’s the type of search that makes me think LinkedIn might get a little nervous. Say you work at Facebook and would like to snag some Googlers? What better way than to figure out who works at Facebook but previously worked at Google. Yeah, Facebook Graph Search can do that:

That Elliot Schrage guy, he’s probably got some connections. Keep in mind you can do this for any number of companies, too. It’s not just for Silicon Valley media giants.

Searching For Places

Now let’s make Yelp a bit nervous. Where to eat? How about asking about restaurants in a particular city that are liked by my friends:

Calafia’s great, by the way, whether you want a quick bite or whether you’re the CEOs of Google and Apple looking to negotiate an impasse. No, really, that happened.

Of course, I mentioned in my other story,�How The New Facebook Search Is Different & Unique From Google Search, that there can be an issue if your friends aren’t really connecting in a way that’s helpful. Here’s an example of that:

Trust me, Newport Dunes isn’t a hot restaurant in Newport Beach. The problem here is that I don’t have a lot of friends who actually check-in on Facebook to restaurants in the city. That makes this search result fairly weak for me.

Searching For Things & Facebookpedia

Lastly, Facebook lets you look for things. Things? I suppose anything that doesn’t fit into the people, places and photos category. Here’s an example, “things” that people who are my friends and who also like Barack Obama like:

NPR. Who would have figured!

These kinds of searches lead quickly into what I consider to be Facebookpedia-mode, where you start just browsing and searching out of�curiosity.

Jodie Foster and Lance Armstrong both had big news this week. If you wanted to have some music for a friend who likes them both, what would that be? Crazy, but Facebook gives you an answer:

More practically, know two people and want to know what music, movies or other things they have in common? Enter their names, and Facebook can come back with matches.

The Bing Integration

Finally, Bing has long been Facebook’s web search partner. With the new�implementation, it feels a little more visible for searches where Facebook itself doesn’t have an answer (and Bing has a short post with more about this):

But then again, when I asked Facebook “who won the golden globes,” it kept trying to send me into various types of Facebook Graph Search matches, none of which were what I wanted. I had to really struggle to get the web search option for Bing to appear.

No doubt, this will improve, as will Facebook Graph Search overall.

It remains very early days, but I already find it fascinating the types of searches this is allowing me to do, searches I hadn’t contemplated before. It reminds me of how in the past, we wouldn’t have thought of doing things like YouTube searches or Twitter searches, since we didn’t have those resources. Now, we search at these places for unique needs. Facebook is a great repository of data, and it finally has a search catching up to all it knows.

To come in the near future, how does Facebook’s new search really do against similar searches at places like Google and Yelp?. Expect some head-to-head action.

Does your website target users in a specific location or around the world? Whatever the size of your business, you can gain valuable insights from the Google Analytics location report. Let's look at the top uses of this data, from beginner right through to advanced level.

Getting Around Location Reports in Google Analytics

The location report in Google Analytics is really good for national and international businesses and even those who pick up visits from around the world without even trying. It's there to help you understand where your visitors are located in the world so that you can see which markets are good for your business and where you may need to improve marketing or services.

The downside to this report is that Google Analytics works out the users location based on where the users IP is located (i.e., where their Internet connection is and not where they actually are). This means that the data needs to be taken with a pinch of salt as it won't always represent what you expect. Once you know this however, you can use the report to benchmark your data, understand usage and start making improvements to get better results.

There are a number of different ways you can use the location report to get the most out of it. These include:

Clicking through on the mapClicking through the report linksUsing the additional links above the data for City, Continent and Sub Continent RegionReviewing Goal and Ecommerce data for each of the reportsApplying Advanced Segments to the reportsUsing Location dimensions in advanced segments for analyzing data in other reports

I'll cover some of these now so that you can start to get more from this report for your website.

Using the Map

The map is a great visual aid, clearly showing the locations that saw the most visits and those that didn't see any visits. If you have a wide range of visits for different countries, then differentiating between the mid-range countries may not be so easy, so I'd mainly use this visual as an overview.

Hovering over a country will show you the country's name and how many visits the website saw from IPs in that country.

You can change the drop down in the top left of the map to show you a different metric to visits if that's of more use to you too. I think the best alternatives would be transactions or revenue. Any metrics which return an average would help with analysis, as those with high / low visits would be skewed and make the report misleading.

Clicking on a country on the map makes the view zoom in to that country and can show you the breakdown of data by region (state or country) as you can see here:

If you click through again, some areas will be able to show you the data for the cities and towns, like so:

Where clicking through again doesn't work you can click the City link above the data table to see this breakdown (as is the case for viewing more detailed data in the United Kingdom).

If you find yourself clicking through and back to different regions, you will find the navigational links at the top beneficial:

These make it easy to change between Cities or Regions without having to reload the previous page. It's also good to see the percentage of visits pie chart just below this, which can put the data you're looking at in to perspective. Luckily the website in the example is not targeting Los Angeles!

Location Report Table

You will notice that every time you click a country or city (whether on the map or in the table) you can then get a more detailed data breakdown in the table. This is great for comparing the performance across locations.

If you have a poor conversion rate in Los Angeles compared to San Francisco (two cities in the same state) you may wish to promote an offer for those in LA to help boost the conversion rate there. Alternatively, if you get traffic from LA, but don't offer your services in this location, you can use this report to gauge the interest and see if it would be worth the investment to expand your business to target that area.

Using Location Specific Segments and Filters

There are many beneficial reports in Google Analytics. Using advanced segments allows you to break the data down by a specific set of criteria to help you compare and hone in on important data.

To set this up to compare data for different countries, click the Advanced Segments link at the top then + New Custom Segment and build it like so:

You can choose Country, Country/Territory, Continent, Sub Continent Region, Region, City or Metro to break the segments down.

Build this for a few key regions or countries and comparing like for like to see where you may need to optimize your website.

Applying the segments to your Traffic Sources reports will analyze the marketing activities and reviewing the segments across Content reports will identify the types of content that are successful or unsuccessful for different locations.

In the past, I've reviewed Google Analytics accounts where there has been unusual activity and I've been able to pin it down to just one location. Creating a segment for that location enables you to identify patterns of behavior, such as accessing the site via one specific keyword every time, or from a specific device. If you identify unusual activity that skews the data, you may wish to create an exclude for this so that you can view the remaining data without this affecting it.

Using Locations in Remarketing

Taking location segments one step further, Google Analytics has the functionality to tag users from specific locations. This is achieved through remarketing cookies so that you can then use AdWords to show those users ads relevant to their location.

Consider creating remarketing lists for locations for the following ideas:

A new store openingDiscount in a specific storeNew / limited product lines available in specific locationsSale on locallyEvent at a specific storeBook signingsFree delivery in that areaConclusion

The location report in Google Analytics is good to look at, whether you're a global business or a small local business. Use it to save money, grow your business, and uncover untapped markets – but bear in mind that at this stage it relies on IP addresses and not physical location.

Is Google pushing Penguin Updates without announcing them? A recent Google video might give that suggestion, but the Google tells us this is not the case.

Confusion Over Penguin Refreshes

The last time Google has confirmed a refresh or update to the Penguin�anti-spam filter was back in October 2012, with Penguin Update 3. That was about 4.5 months ago.

In a recent Google Webmaster Hangout with Google’s John Mueller, one person asked John about these updates. John replied in a manner that may be interpreted as Penguin is updated on a more regular cycle but not always announced. You can listen to what he said starting at about 4 minutes in the video:

Google: Penguin Algorithm Is Not Refreshed Regularly

When I asked, Google said John was referring to general “link analysis” refreshes but not the Penguin algorithm. In fact, Google confirmed that there have been no Penguin updates since the last confirmed one 4.5 months ago. Google also told us that they do not do regular updates to the Penguin algorithm, like they do with the Panda algorithm.

Panda Algorithm Is Refreshed Monthly

As you know, the Panda Update algorithm is mostly on a monthly basis now and we should be getting a Panda refresh within the next couple days (the last, Panda 24, happened about a month ago). Google has not yet confirmed a Panda update for this month but some are seeing signs of a possible Panda update hitting.

History Of Penguin Updates

Here�s the list so far, showing when each Penguin update came out, the percentage of English-languages queries it was said to impact (other languages are also impacted, but we�re using English as a consistent baseline):

The European Commission (EC) hit Microsoft with a €561 million fine Wednesday, after the firm failed to keep its promise of offering Windows users a choice of web browsers. Web browser rivals Google and Opera tipped off the EC about Microsoft's violations, according to the Financial Times.

Microsoft's web browser choice option was part of a deal it made with the EC to avoid a multi-billion dollar fine back in 2009, however for 14 months in 2011 Windows 7 users did not see the option.

Microsoft blamed this on a technical error, but its excuse wasn't enough to avoid a steep fine and the honor of becoming the first company to fail to comply with an EC antitrust agreement.

However the EC took 14 months to begin investigating Microsoft for the violation, which the FT says was spurred by complaints from Google and Opera.

Both Google and Opera develop rival web browsers, and in the case of Google there is a wider rivalry in web search and advertising, cloud services, and operating systems software.

The EC said Microsoft did cooroperate with its investigation and that was reflected in the fine, which could have been much higher. Nevertheless, if the FT's report is accurate, both Google and Opera must have gained satisfaction at seeing Microsoft hit with a large fine.

According to Reuters on Tuesday next week the already embattled new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson will lay out his vision for the company. The pressure will be on to deliver a coherent and convincing plan — emphasis on convincing.

Following the announcement of 2,000 layoffs earlier this week Thompson sought to reassure Yahoo employees in a company memo. A streamlined organizational structure will better enable Yahoo to compete in the future, he reportedly said.

That new structure will apparently not include Yahoo Chief Product Officer Blake Irving, who has resigned. His organization took a disproportionate hit in the layoffs and is being “blown up” according to AllThingsD.

Reuters reports that Thompson’s plan will focus on three areas: “core media and communications,” “platforms” and “data.” We’ll see how that impacts what remains of Yahoo search and other products. Notwithstanding the search outsourcing deal with Microsoft, apparently there are still a remarkable “1,800 staffers for search,” according to an anonymous Yahoo executive quoted in the article:

The fate of several Yahoo businesses remains uncertain, particularly the search business, according to the source, who wished to remain anonymous because the comments involved company matters. While Yahoo struck a deal with Microsoft Corp in 2009 to outsource much of its search operations, Yahoo still employs roughly 1,800 staffers for search, the executive said.

My view has been that Yahoo made a strategic mistake in doing the search deal with Microsoft and has “paid” for it ever since it in lost talent and revenue.

Earlier this year the company shuttered a bunch of mobile apps that were underperforming. The Next Web said that Yahoo’s Asian Foursquare lookalike service Koprol is one that may also be in jeopardy. Undoubtedly there will be other Yahoo products that suffer or are entirely shuttered in the forthcoming reorg.

Whatever Thompson says next Tuesday it will be met with skepticism by the tech community, unless or until the attempted turnaround demonstrates real results. There have been too many Yahoo CEOs announcing too many comeback strategies over the past several years.

While Yahoo still has three of the top 10 US websites according to Hitwise, it has entered a kind of negative spiral that it may not be able to escape. Its value as a company and a brand has steadily eroded.

The recent layoff notices have no doubt created a kind of numbness internally among the employees that remain. They’ll be working under conditions of stress and uncertainty — not the kind of upbeat atmosphere that fosters creativity and innovation.

In a recent study by SurveyMonkey examining SEO assumptions, respondents were given two search result pages, one with a page header labeled “Google” and the other with a page header labeled “Bing,” and asked which page of results they preferred. Even when the page header labels were swapped, more users preferred the Google search results.

Of 641 survey respondents, 379 participants received a survey asking which of two search result pages they preferred. One page of results for the term “file taxes” included true Google results and the other page included true Bing results. The Google page was chosen by majority of the respondents.

A second survey was given to 262 participants. Using the same search term, respondents had to choose between a Google search results page and a Bing search result page. In this survey the SERP headers were swapped with Google results listed as Bing results and Bing results listed as Google results. Of the respondents who received the swapped search result pages, a larger percentage of respondents still chose Google results, even though they were actually Bing search results.

Not only did the survey find that users are biased toward Google, but they are influenced by a site’s brand as well. In a separate question, participants who received the first survey were asked to rate the believability of an article on CNN.com, while participants who received the second survey were asked to rate the believability of an article on a generic website, InternetNews.com. Respondents were more likely to rate the CNN.com article as believable.

Another key finding of the survey revealed that the No. 1 reason users would block a website from future searches if given the option was if the website contained too many ads.

The study, conducted using SurveyMonkey’s Audience tool, asked participants a number of questions based on general SEO assumptions. The audience was a random selection of males and females, age 18 to 60 from across the country with annual household incomes ranging from $25,000 to $150,000+ and varying education levels.

Keyword-targeted, indexable landing pages (where the keyphrase is the location and the service)Consistent, accurate business listing data across multiple listing data providersConsistent, accurate name, address and phone number on the site landing page, business listings, and search engine local pageGood reviews, content, and engagement on search engine local pages (Google+)Inbound links and citations / mentions for the target web page and the domainUser searches for the business name in the geographical areaGoogle Map Maker engagement (for Google, obviously)A good mobile experience (50 percent of mobile searches have local intent)

Given a basic understanding of the tactics and the user experience for local search, we can now review the various options for local search optimization.

Local SEO for the Truly Clueless

Say you are a lawyer, a plumber, or an exterminator and you don't have time to worry about this stuff. Setting aside the fact that you likely aren't reading this article, let's look at the 100 percent outsourced options.

These vendors will set you up with a website, a local ad or marketing campaign, and some kind of local off-site page presence for a monthly fee, all you need to do is give them a call and a credit card number.

ReachLocal: Pretty much the first players in this space and the industry leader. They tend to target the larger end of the small business market (more than a few employees and more than a few hundreds of dollars a month to spend). ReachLocal will set you up with a web presence and an online marketing (search, social, display, mobile) campaign that fits your budget.Yodle: Lesser known, but providing pretty much the same service as ReachLocal, Yodle targets the small end of the small business segment. They will set you up with a basic template-driven, search optimized website on a domain they own and control. They will also set up a paid search campaign assuming you have the budget, and will track and forward any calls they generate.

One thing to consider with these outsourced solutions is once you stop paying them, you may lose your website, the leads stop coming, and any SEO equity you may have established goes bye-bye.

If you really don't think you can figure out how to create a website and do basic SEO, the outsourced approach is the solution for you. Just be aware of the downsides and the fact that you are paying them for the service. Otherwise, buck it up and make your own website and follow the instructions below to optimize it for local search.

The Do-It-Yourself Approach to Local SEO

So you are going to do it yourself. As we have seen above, you need good on-page SEO to rock in local search and a good mobile site or responsive design since a ton of your local searches will be on mobile devices.

Step 1: Basic SEO

You need to get your on-page SEO in order – create a nice, responsive site with a local keyword-targeted home page (e.g., "Childrens Resale Store, Brooklyn, NY"). Then go about the usual SEO tasks of getting good inbound links, citations, and mentions in the media.

With basic SEO out of the way, you now need to think about straightening out your business listings and optimizing your off-site local pages like Google+, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, and many others.

Step 2: Business Listings

For a small business, you can manually create and update your business listings at several places. For example, you can get a Dun & Bradstreet number, and update or create a listing with your name, address, and phone number at InfoUSA. These guys gradually feed many other local services like the Yellow Pages vendors with data.

Step 3: Off-site Local Pages

Now it's time to get your off-site act together. With a few more basic steps like claiming your Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and Yelp pages and enriching your location on Google Map Maker you are on well on your local search way.

Go get some great reviews, upload photos, and make sure you're your name, address and phone number (NAP) data is visible on your home or store page and exactly matches your listing data. Add semantic markup code to your NAP data to be 100% sure the engines get the message.

Large Enterprise Local SEO

The same basic rules apply for larger businesses with a big local footprint, but things get considerably more complex and time consuming. Welcome to the world of enterprise local search vendors. And, if you're really busy, you may need a local search agency or specialist.

Enterprise Listings Management

Let's take a look at some of the main local search vendors. If you work with an agency, they will most likely be using some combination of these in their service.

Universal Business Listings: UBL directly feeds business databases like Acxiom, Dun & Bradstreet, and InfoGroup (last time we checked). These are primary datafeed providers to multiple publishers. UBL also has a bulk claiming service for sites like Google+, allowing you to make a one-time claim and update of your data. UBL is not the company to work with to streamline management and updating of social / local sites, but they can get your basic business listings created or cleaned up so they can work their way through the local data ecosystem.Localeze: Recently acquired by Neustar, Localeze is similar to UBL in that it provides business listings data directly to a variety of publishers and primary data sources. In some ways Localeze is complementary to UBL as it provides data to a different set of distribution partners including Yahoo, Bing, Yellowpages.com, Facebook, Twitter, and TomTom. Localeze has created an impressive roster of sites it feeds with data.

There are other options as well, but for the sake of brevity, let's move on to:

Enterprise Local Pages Management

Keeping third-party local sites like Google+, Yahoo Business Listings, and Yelp current and enriched with offers, campaign content, and offers is a big job, especially for brands with hundreds of locations. Previously, it was pretty much a manual job. Nowadays, there are several players who have stepped up and created APIs and interfaces that allow you to manage off-site local pages centrally.

Once you get into the space of managing multiple off-site pages for multiple locations you are going to be spending serious coin. If you have the budget, here are some folks to take a look at:

Yext: While not exclusively aimed at large enterprise, the Yext team offers a range of services including the ability to centrally claim and enrich (with offers or other content) a large number of 3rd party sites. Yext charges a yearly fee for management with additional costs that vary with the amount of content you want to push to the managed sites. If you want to quickly push out a short-term offer to dozens of sites for hundreds of locations, and you have the budget, Yext may be for you. Recently, Yext and Yahoo announced Localworks – a service aimed at small businesses that gives them access to Yext and Yahoo listing and management services for $30 per month.Rio Local: Pretty much focused on larger companies with multiple locations, Rio has the only complete hosted local search solution. They 1) Host the local landing page and 2) Claim any number of off-site local pages (G+, yelp, etc) and 3) Create and verify the business listings. If you are OK with having them host your local on-site pages, Rio may be the option for you as they have the most control and due to 'owning' the landing page they can give pretty complete end to end reporting.

I am sure I missed a ton of vendors, so feel free to let me know what I left out in the comments.

Conclusion: Local Search Offers Great ROI

For a small business, local search may something that can be done in an afternoon, followed up by a quick daily or weekly review of off-site pages.

For a large business – say 1,000 locations – the costs and difficulty rapidly escalate. While it might seem crazy to spend $500,000 in vendor fees and $50,000 in agency management time to locally optimize your franchises, I would argue that it offers a great return. For some industries (e.g., finance) the ROI could truly be stellar.

Local search results are also less competitive than core web results. While you might not ever be able to rank for 'Life Insurance' your might very well be able to rank for 'Life Insurance broker' queries in Albany and every other city your do business in. Big brands, small brands, take note.

So if you haven't already it's time to add local search optimization to your marketing plan. But there's no need to hurry - my small local business in Brooklyn would rather not have the competition.